Well, this is something: the continuing meteoric rise of music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have resulted in Australian music industry revenues going up for the first time in three years. It’s a five percent increase – modest, but definitely a change from the doom and gloom we’ve been hearing for years.
Digital streaming now constitutes a whopping 62% of the market, and we wouldn’t be surprised if that kept increasing. CD and DVD sales are obviously down. Vinyl sales increased by 38%, thanks to your flaxen-haired, Supreme hat wearing mate who reckons the sound on the latest DZ Deathrays “just sounds fuller on vinyl brother, it’s fuller and warmer.”
Obviously the big question is whether artists are still getting screwed. Well, they are and they aren’t. Though the revenue that streaming services make tends to be snatched up by various stakeholders along the way before they get to the artist, many Aussie musos still like the exposure.
Al Grigg from Palms told the ABC that streaming is a good way to get fans onboard and bring them to gigs:
“More people are hearing the band, and maybe then more people are liking the band, and they will buy a ticket and come and see you play live or they might buy a T-shirt, and then you are making your money that way.”
Let’s hope that as streaming gets bigger and bigger, we can find some opportunities to reimburse our artist battlers.
Source: ABC News.
Photo: Getty Images / Marc Grimwade.
